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The Albuquerque Turkey

Master con artist Radar Hoverlander is getting out of the life…unless his old man drags him back in. After their last big con netted them a nice chunk of change, Radar Hoverlander and his grifter girlfriend, Allie Quinn, have vowed to go straight. But Radar’s fragile commitment to clean living is put to the test when an oddly hefty lady in red shows up and stalks him through the streets of Santa Fe. Except that’s no lady - it’s Radar’s dad, Woody Hoverlander, a world class con artist in his own right. Radar correctly figures if his dad is in drag, he must be in trouble. Woody is on the lam, with a Vegas hard guy after him and a large debt to clear.

Publisher's Summary

What do the Merlin Game, the Penny Skim, the Doolally Snadoodle, and the Afterparty Snuke have in common? They're all the work of world-class con artist and master bafflegabber Radar Hoverlander. Radar’s been "on the snuke" since childhood, but he's still looking for his California Roll, the one big scam that'll set him up in sushi for life.

Trouble arrives in the stunning, sassy package of Allie Quinn - either the last true innocent or a con artist so slick she makes Radar look like a Quaker. Radar's hapless sidekick, Vic Mirplo, a lovable loser who couldn't con a kid out of a candy cane, thinks Radar is being played. But if love is blind, it's also deaf, dumb, and stupid, and before Radar knows it, he's sucked into a vortex of double-, triple-, and quadruple-crosses that'll either net him his precious California Roll or put him in a hole in the ground.

As timeless as a perpetual motion machine, as timely as a Madoff arraignment, The California Roll brings you deep inside the world of con artistry, where every fact is fiction and the second liar never has a chance.

John Vorhaus's Radar Hoverlander is a lovable rogue who drags us into situations that are always fresh and always fun! And the story might slow down from scene to scene, but you would never call is "slow" (in any sense of the word).

The writing is a delight! Vorhaus clearly adores the English language, and uses it as masterfully as Douglas Adams or P. G. Wodehouse. In fact, the overall sense of the novel can best be compared to the Dirk Gently or Jeeves series by those respective authors: Fun characters doing fun (if not always well-advised, or even sane) things that keep the story tension winding ever tighter, until the inevitable climatic explosion!